As a result of increased use of the World Wide Web (WWW) and computerized help files, rapid design and generation of web pages or help files is a necessity. Referring to FIG. 1, there is depicted a link management system provided by the prior art. An information developer creates units of source information 102A, 102B and 102C having information content 104A, 104B and 104C, and links 106A, 106B and 106C respectively. An example of units of information is a collection of web pages for a corporate web site wherein the web pages are inter-linked by URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) links. There are many well known application programs for generating and linking web pages such as Dreamweaver™ available from Macromedia of California, U.S.A. Another example of units of information is a collection of help files that are inter-linked by URL links. The collection of help files are used in a computer program application, such as a word processing application like Lotus™ Word Pro™ available from IBM Corporation of New York, U.S.A., to provide assistance to users of the computer program. There are many well known application programs for generating and linking help pages such as RoboHelp™ available from eHelp Corporation of California. Content 104A, 104B and 104C includes textual and/or graphic information for displaying the information to end users or information consumers. Links 106A, 106B, 106C link the units 102A, 102B, 102C together in a manner determined by the information developer. It will be appreciated that units 102A, 102B, 102C, content 104A, 104B, 104C, and links 106A, 106B, 106C reside in memory 110 of a computer system 108. Memory 110 is operationally connected to central processing unit 112, which in turn is operationally connected to display 114 and keyboard/mouse 116 to allow the information developer to manage (i.e., create, view, modify, delete) various aspects of units 102A, 102B, 102C, content 104A, 104B, 104C, and links 106A, 106B, 106C.
More specifically, the information developer develops units of source information 102A, 102B and 102C such that link 106A of unit 102A points to unit 102B, link 106B of unit 102B points to unit 102C, and link 106C of unit 102C points to unit 102A. It will be appreciated that the linking of the units of information is set up to achieve the purposes of the information developer. When the information developer develops a new unit of source information 102D, the developer must decide which links to add, delete or modify in order to integrate the linking of unit 102D with the existing linked units 102A, 102B and 102C. For example, the information developer may decide that link 106C should point to unit 102D and link 106D should point to unit 102A and then must modify link 106C and enable link 106D accordingly to met this new requirement or purpose. It will be appreciated that each time the information developer creates, deletes or modifies various units of source information, the links embedded in each unit of source information must be individually updated, which is generally inconvenient especially when the developer is responsible for developing a multitude of units of source information which over time will evolve and may require constant effort for updating the links. In an inconvenient and disorganized manner, the system 100 intermixes the information content and the links into a potentially unruly tangle of links and information content which will become very difficult to disentangle when changes to the linking of the units of information is required.
Referring to FIG. 2, there is depicted another link management system 200 provided by the prior art. An information developer creates units of source information 202A, 202B having information content 204A, 204B respectively. A generator 210 having a compiler 208 or equivalent, reads computer programmed instructions 206 having programmed assignments for explicitly stating an arbitrary, inter-linking assignment between units of source information 204A and 204B, and follows instructions 206 to insert desired links in various units of information 212A, 212B. Generator 210 generates units of target information 212A, 212B having content 214A, 214B and links 216A, 216B respectively. The links 216A, 216B are explicitly defined in computer programmed instructions 206. Several examples of system 200 are XLINK Library which was developed by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), Topic Maps which was developed as an ISO (International Standards Organization) standard, and RDF Resource Descriptor which was developed by Framework under the guidance of the W3C.
It will be appreciated that content 204A, 204B includes textual and/or graphic information. Instructions 206 includes computer programmed instructions that explicitly state or define desired linking relationships between various units of source information 202A, 202B or units of target information 212A, 212B. An example of programmed instructions of instructions 206 is revealed in Appendix 1.
Compiler 208 reads and interprets or converts the instructions 206 to direct the generator 210 to generate units of target information 212A, 212B. Instructions 206 provides computer programmed instructions for instructing a Central Processing Unit (CPU), via generator 210, to generate content 214A, 214B; for example, content 214A includes content 204A, and content 214B includes content 204B. Also, instructions 206 provides explicit instructions for instructing the generator to insert links 216A, 216B for pointing to various generated units of target information; for example, link 216A links unit 212A to unit 212B, and link 216B links unit 212B to unit 212A. It will be appreciated that each unit of target information will be linked to at least one other unit of target information. When new units of information are to be added or existing units of information are to be removed, or when the linking relationships between various units of information are changed, the information developer makes changes to instructions 206 and causes generator 210 to read the adapted or changed instructions to regenerate units of target information 212A, 212B.
It will be appreciated that units of information 202A, 202B, 212A, 212B, instructions 206 and generator 210 all reside in memory 220 of computer system 218. Memory 220 is operationally coupled to CPU 222, which in turn is operationally coupled to display 224 and keyboard/mouse 226 so that the developer can view and adapt instructions 206 accordingly to achieve the purposes of the task of inter-linking the units of source information 202A and 202B.
While the units of source information and the instructions are generated separately, the instructions require the information developer to learn and become proficient in a new computer programming language, techniques, or procedures, which places an additional and inconvenient learning curve or burden on the information developer. Additionally, if the information developer were to be replaced, a new information developer would face the inconvenient task of debugging instructions 206 to determine the inter-linking relationships between units of target information 212A and 212B. The structure of instructions 206 indicating the locations of the various information content does not correspond to the structure of the relationships between the units of target information. The instructions 206 stores information about relationships but the structure of the instructions of instructions 206 does not express these relationships.
Generally, the prior art provides inadequate methods for inter-linking units of information. Time is wasted on individually updating each unit of information or on learning new programming languages, techniques, or procedures to configure explicit assignments of inter-linking relationships between units of information. Accordingly, a link management system which addresses, at least in part, these and other shortcomings is desired.